Drupal for the Financial Sector

Drupal is ideal for large, complex enterprise class websites. The platform is getting easier day by day. Drupal, regarded as one of the most flexible and powerful CMSs available for developing complex enterprise websites, wasn't originally meant to be a CMS. Drupal has a relatively small installed base. Just 2.3% of all websites use the CMS. But this statistic does not do justice to its significant presence in the enterprise. Designed as an open-source Web publishing platform, Drupal has a committed following among developers of high-end and enterprise-scale websites. There's a completely different category of developers in this community.

Selection of a platform for any website hinges upon its potential requirements and goals. Drupal is the preferred CMS  for Enterprise level websites and web applications. Drupal scores with superior designs, user friendliness and security for website having large amounts of content such as large businesses with droves of users. The platform can also be used to build a basic website such as for product listing, event listing etc.

Drupal is specifically tailored for financial service organizations. Financial service establishments such as banks, insurance firms, credit card companies place much emphasis on security because client's financial information is stored on the website. Customer related financial data and other sensitive information need protection from malicious intrusion. Phishing is a genuine threat that financial establishments need to take seriously. Drupal is ideal for websites that mainly deal with finance or have confidential information as it has the ability to monitor security issues, investigate, verify and publish potential security issues of the websites as well as software installations.

As far as the confidentiality and security of the website is concerned, it is recommended to have an exhaustive interaction with the Drupal development firm. This is necessary to ensure there are no loopholes at every stage of development. The data needs to be consistent, fast and precise when customers attempt to access their account information. Drupal development firms can build Drupal solutions for each requirement, including coding and scalability. Drupal uses automated scaling to accommodate and maintain the site's stability and thus manage heavy traffic during peak hours.

There are many significant and important entities in the financial services industry who have implemented Drupal. Insurance companies across the globe, whether big and small have readily adopted Drupal. The popularity of Drupal in the financial sector is growing by leaps and bounds.

Drupal meets the content management needs of contemporary websites quite nicely. Its extensibility and scalability make it well suited to large and complex websites. As Drupal is free, it provides big cost savings as benchmarked against proprietary content management systems.

Drupal is open source and bolstered by a massive developer user community. The latest release of Drupal has a host of state-of-the-art features and supports multiple languages. The mobile version of Drupal makes the platform relevant to the present and ready for the future. Clearly, it is the technology of the future fully equipped to meet the challenges of the financial industry.

Opting for the Right Modules Using Drupal: When Less is More!

There are hordes of powerful Drupal extensions or Modules to opt from and many more are incorporated every passing day. Well, in such a scenario, it is quite natural to find it difficult to choose the right module for the task at hand! It is interesting to gauge how to combine modules in useful ways and develop websites such as online store, e-commerce, wiki, photo gallery, personal blogs or a product review site.

Every new project approaches with a unique demand and so modules which were important at one time for a particular project may not be as useful now. Also, new modules hold better functionalities totally eliminating the need for the earlier ones.

However, it is still pertinent to carefully evaluate modules you choose before committing to them. You already know where to find the modules --- they are furnished on the main Drupal.org website.

Basic Types of Modules on Drupal Sites

Ways to Choose the Right Module

• You can spot the 'must-have' modules which are most frequently utilized for building Drupal websites.
• There are also some modules which have already proved their worth and would be continued to be used.
•  Choose modules that are compatible with your Drupal version. For this, choose the right release.
•  Consider factors like over-all code quality of the module, whether it has been used in the overall community and also whether the module is well-maintained or not.
•  With every module, codes etc. are added to the site. Dealing with more things will take longer duration to load the pages. So, choose fewer modules.
• Choose Drupal modules which are actively maintained, that is, the required fixes are applied regularly.
• The module must conform to higher code quality level.
• The module must attend to security concerns.
• The module must be segmented to make sure that the code is loaded only when required.

 No Exact Science for Choosing Modules

Some of the most commonly used Drupal modules are Field Group, Link, Media (for organizing and storing audio and video) and References. Then there is View Reference, Block Reference, Submitagain etc...you name it!

There are core modules for Drupal that are referred to as Menus. Menus add functionality for working with navigation. Then, there are many user-created modules which can be installed quite fast. The Token Handling modules do not have conspicuous actions and just place small 'tokens' inside placeholders which serve a central API for modules for utilization of these tokens. 

Well, there are tons of modules, each doing its bit for extending the basic functionality of the open-source Drupal platform. It is quite possible that you choose a module and it later turns out to cause trouble with messy code and cross-browser problems!  

There is no doubt that Drupal modules make Drupal an admirable platform to build on. With experience, you will notice that certain modules become common for a particular type of project. However, fewer modules is the key! Drupal is certainly the ideal PHP content management platform with free services, customer helpline, forums and modules. Get ready for some dynamic activity on your website, with Drupal Modules!